Brings together opinion leaders and decision makers from the corporate, entrepreneurship, science and public world

Est. October 2016

WHAT: Regular public event for everyone interested

WHEN: Quarterly, since October 2016, stay put for new date

WHERE: Wayra Academy / Stylight Headquarter

Our event series "#shapetalks" serves as a central tool to gain a holistic understanding of societal issues, to strengthen the links between politics, business, civil society and science, and in particular to give a voice to the younger generation."

Third event, February 22nd 2018, Recap:

The Future of Urban Mobility

On Feb 22nd, 2018 as part of our Speaker Series, we hosted a panel discussion on "The Future of Urban Mobility", which attracted a large number of guests from corporates, academia, civil services and NGOs. We would particularly like to thank all the panelists and our sponsors Stylight and Capgemini for making this event a great success. The following panelists were part of the discussion:

If you are interested in future mobility but unfortunately have missed the event, please find below the live recording.

Impressions from the event

Second event, January 16th 2017, Recap:

Art in the Digital Age with Hans Ulrich Obrist

On January 16th, the Global Shapers Munich hosted their second event of the Global Shaper Speaker Series at the premises of Wayra (Telefonica Tech Incubator) right in the city centre of Munich, with Hans Ulrich Obrist who gave an inspiring talk about “Art in the Digital Age”.

HUO’s talk attracted more than 150 people from various backgrounds, bringing artsy and cosmopolitan flair to Munich, which one would normally find at pop-up gallery openings and vernissages in Berlin, London or New York. For those, who were not able to attend this special gathering, we were able to offer a live-stream which you can access here.

Coining the term “encyclopaedic travel”, Obrist elaborated on his youth and career beginnings, where he used to sleep only on night trains while travelling Europe in order to explore the world and meet inspiring people.

Since the audience was relatively young and filled with aspiring artists, HUO emphasised the importance of mentorship. In his early days he was mentored by the German gallerist Kasper König and others who saw potential in him and the eagerness to learn. The importance of learning was another great takeaway. Besides buying a book every day, reading, meeting inspiring people, travelling to get creative vibes and researching, Hans Ulrich Obrist said that continuous learning is one of the traits.

HUO’s favourite author is the Lebanese poet Etel Adnan, whose publications he all read. He recommend to read her multiple times, since here work is poetic, analytical and timeless. You find here work here.

Yet the most interesting during the event was his creative energy, which translated into a never resting eyebeam, passion for the art work he showed us in the presentation and a fast paced talk, where HUO wanted to elaborate more with each sentence. Thus, the mood was great and all attendees were completely immersed in his presentation.

His take on digitalisation in the arts was visionary, since he elaborated that aspiring talents have now more possibilities to present their work. Instagram and art blogs are a democratising force in the previously secluded art world. HUO has his own Instagram art project, depicting handwritten notes of artists and people that he meets. Fear of losing handwriting in our modern society is the driving force for this project, which you can find here.

A little bit about HUO:

Hans Ulrich Obrist who is a world renowned curator for contemporary art. HUO, his acronym in the art world stands for a never ending stream of creative energy, restlessness and work ethos, which leads to numerous accolades and praises. In the Power 100 ranking 2016 by ArtReview, the art behemoth was named the most influential person in the global art world for the second time.

Hans Ulrich Obrist is founding member of the “Akademie der Künste der Welt” in Cologne and Artistic Director of the Serpetine Galleries in London, which is more than “just” a gallery, but a holistic, immersive art experience that attracts more than 1.000.000 visitors per year.

Furthermore, he has helped to create memorable experience around the world by independently curating more than 200 exhibitions.

After his talk, he answered questions from the audience. The last one was about his definition of success, which is very wise. Obrist defined success as usefulness for himself and society. He also emphasised the fact of hard work, which lead to his 15 minute sleep – 3 hour awake day and night cycle while writing one of his books.

Obviously there was much more interesting and inspiring to hear and see. If you don’t want to muss our next event than like us on Facebook.

We will keep you posted regarding our next event - feel free to contact us in case you have great ideas that should be discussed in one of our next events or in case you have contacts to inspiring speakers!

First event, October 6th 2016, Recap:

"Future of Work - Man vs. Machine" was the headline of the Munich Shapers first "Speaker Series" event taking place in the premises of Wayra (Telefonica Tech Incubator) right in the city centre of Munich, followed by a live audience of 100+ and more than [40,000] via facebook live stream.

A diverse panel representing academia (Dr. Florian Lehmer - Institute for Employment Research), the business (Florian Brantner, Founder and CEO of Robotics start-up Magazino) and tech world (Johann Romefort, Tech-Evangelist at Stylight) presented their perspectives on how technological advancements will influence the labour market of tomorrow. While digitization of the business world has certainly become one of the "hot" topics in recent months/years, the panel discussion - led by outgoing curator Aline Laucke - revealed the diversity / breadth of opinions and thus uncertainty surrounding the future of work or: our jobs of tomorrow!

A lively discussion between panelists and audience furthermore showed controversies around (1) who will be affected and (2) how this change should be managed.

(1) In contrast to the widely spread opinion, that automization will only affect low-skilled workers and will at some point be limited, we learned that a "radiologist is very likely to become unemployed - the only question is when this is about to happen"

(2) Even bigger controversy was caused by the question on human substitution effects on social welfare - considering facts like high youth unemployment rates in certain parts of Europe, millions of refugees entering the labour market and a loss of billions of tax income Euros (or should we think about charging income tax for robots?)

Given the enormous response we received at the event, we invite all of you - the Global Shapers Community - to get in touch for further discussions. The event showed that we hit a pressing topic for our generation - so let's be part of it and shape it!

We will keep you posted regarding our next event - feel free to contact us in case you have great ideas that should be discussed in one of our next events or in case you have contacts to inspiring speakers!